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NASA's Moon Plan: Too Old-Fashioned?

Irene Klotz, Discovery News

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Been There, Done That

Feb. 13, 2008 -- It took a fatal space shuttle accident to lift the U.S. space program out of low-Earth orbit and redirect it toward the moon. Now the prospect of a new president in office has some scientists wondering if the country has set its sights high enough.

"We are supportive of human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit," said Lou Friedman, director of the California-based Planetary Society educational institute. "But there are questions if the moon program is enough to drive public interest. Will kids want to step foot on the moon like their grandparents did?"

Friedman and other exploration advocates are convening an invitation-only workshop this week at Stanford University in California to reconsider the path laid out by President George W. Bush four years ago. Acting on the advice of the highly respected panel that investigated the 2003 Columbia accident, Bush ordered NASA to retire the remaining space shuttles by 2010 after finishing the half-built International Space Station.

The agency was told to develop a new type of ship that could not only ferry crews to and from the orbital outpost, but land astronauts on the moon.

Rather than Apollo-era sorties, NASA decided successive moon missions would lay the foundation for a permanently occupied lunar base. Eventually the program, called Constellation, would lead to manned missions to asteroids and Mars.

Not Your Grandparents' Apollo

Among Constellation's most fervent supporters is NASA's administrator, Michael Griffin, a scholar with five masters degrees and a doctorate and a former aerospace industry executive. He argues that aiming for the moon is the only path that makes sense given NASA's relatively flat budgets and its need for transportation to low-Earth orbit even while it aims to put humans farther out into the solar system.

The agency is hoping commercial companies will develop the ability to ferry crews and cargo to the space station once the shuttle is retired. Still, NASA cannot count on that happening.

"We can't gamble the future of the space station on a commercial venture," Griffin said.

The spaceships NASA has in mind would enable a crew of four to land anywhere on the moon and stay for a week, and later for up to six months. The Apollo missions of 1969-1972 were two-man sorties lasting up to three days on the moon's equatorial regions.